Asthma, tics, weight or a heart condition?

I used to think they were "asthma attacks". I carried that term like a badge, presented it to the doctors, explained that it was because I hadn't eaten or I'd walked too far or I'd had a headache or I'd needed more room in that stuffy place to breathe.

I thought wrong.

As a child, my anxiety never displayed itself in the way it chooses to, now. Anxiety and I walked together. And it helped me immensely. Because of it, I got really great grades. Of course the price was paid in little hidden bodily scratches for every littlest cause, the smallest and mildest twitch in my eyes during really stressful moments that only a couple of people ever noticed.

That was secondary school. But in university, my parents chose the worst possible option for me. I agreed. And it changed... Everything.

What happens is that if you keep a certain urgent thing or emotion suppressed for a very long time, it often finds a way to show itself. It's like a mole digging underneath the skin. If one passage out is blocked, it finds another - all it knows is that it needs to come out. It needs to be free or it might collapse without the oxygen...

Oxygen.

We don't think about breathing, much, do we? It's simple. It's just there. I didn't, once, too, I suppose. Not until the first time I had a panic attack. I'm sure I had things like this in secondary school. Lesser, more hidden shows that I never did in public. But this time, it was different. This time I couldn't suppress it and I couldn't make it go away.

No, instead, my body demanded my attention. My body forced all that horribly uncontrollable energy into my face, my eyes, my hands. My body made me jerk and twitch - I call it glitching, now that I know the reason why. Now that I understand it a bit better.

But you can imagine how confusing that might be for a teenager who felt anxious so generally that seeing it as the root cause seemed ridiculous. So I told the doctors it was asthma. And I got nebulised over and over again, every single time. People would crowd around me each time it happened in public. My mother caught it a couple of times; my father once.

And the shame just grew and grew.

The attention always made it worse. I'd get triggered by something seemingly small and random. Forgetting whether the word I was meant to use was morning or afternoon. Of course, it could be a much bigger cause, too. And then the ability to breathe would escape me. And I would keep searching for it, trying to suck out all the oxygen of the air around me in shallow, desperate, hungry gulps for life until I was inhaling pure fire, braising my lungs in stinging marks, filling it up with smoke and fumes.

I try to make the words pretty because it's nice to make something so terrible seem beautiful. I like the thought of it. Fire and smoke and desperation. Clawing at my throat, hoping someone, anyone could make it stop. And sometimes, the attacks were quiet. Once upon a time, barely triggered at all, I felt a weight collapse against my chest for a full hour or so.

And I was crushed and I was crushed and I was crushed...

And being the me I was, I wondered if it was a heart attack. Some physical illness, definitely not mental. I asked myself a few times, laughing between the tears that night, if I was going to die. And at times, I'm between the heaving palpitations, I would consider calling out for help. But how many mentally ill people consider stretching a hand out into the world a worse fate than drowning?

Progress, now. I do know that I wasn't having asthma attacks or heart attacks. It seems ridiculous to me today that I even considered it. But when you live in a world where people hide their more broken sides, what else can you rationalise? But that it has to be physical unwellness and not the mind that can have so much power over the body?

It's some time later that I read about something like what I'd gone through in a book. The first time I saw it being represented, maybe. Perhaps not the first time but... With words that truly spoke to me. It was "Veronica Decides to Die". Paulo Coelho. I saw it again in this recent Bridgerton series. I saw my pain represented in fictional people and I smiled for a moment. Because hey. Maybe some people are better at hiding. Maybe it doesn't come out in uncontrollable twitches and spasms (which I've recently learnt how to better deal with). Maybe not all these people accidentally misdiagnosed themselves with Tourettes or asthma or heart conditions before they discovered the truth.

Maybe that doctor that spoke to my parents when I was maybe six years old should have maybe told them it was a deeper problem than just the cliche fat kid needing to lose weight trope.

But I taught myself what was wrong. And I learnt to do my best with it. To accept it. To press a hand to where its hurting, as if that could somehow cool the pistons firing off within my chest, to ease my stomach into less knotting please and to breathe. The more I gasped for oxygen, the less seemed to come.

So instead, I let go. And I turn my eyes towards oblivion. And I wait for this body of mine to stabilise. This tired, kind body which does its best for me. This body that begged me to listen to it until it had to force me to hear its pleas instead. I'm a teeny bit older, now. And more importantly, I know myself a little more. And I am kinder to myself too; mind body and soul.

And that has made all the difference.